urban gardener: life is an experiment

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About Cat

Lives in Jersey City with her wife Beth. She is a registered voter, urban gardener, environmentalist, and an advocate of local community, LGBT rights, animals, and the arts. She is also the owner of Harmony Media, NJ and publisher of the Jersey City Independent.

There are so many wonderful items and good information at Modern Sage, my friend Leah’s shop in Jersey City. I feel the stress melt away every time I stop by and I get reinvigorate to find my place in the world. If you’re in the neighborhood drop by!

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The next time someone asks you why LGBT Pride marches exist or why Gay Pride Month is June tell them “A bisexual woman named Brenda Howard thought it should be.” ~ Tom Limoncelli

I am very grateful to my pride family in Jersey City, NYC and beyond! Thank you… to everyone at Heritage of Pride for keeping PRIDE alive 365 days a year, to all those LGBT pioneers who have come before us, and to the elders and youth of our community that keep fighting for full quality and inclusively.

Tomatoes are annuals but these two rogue plants reseeded themselves and began sprouting on their own in early May. Stranger yet… I had peppers in this pot last year. At first I wasn’t sure if they were in fact tomatoes, they could have been pepper plants or weeds. I have some weeds that grow in my garden that look similar to tomato/pepper seedlings. But here they are, growing strong and one plant already has flowers. I’m guessing they are either cherry or yellow pear since it’s such a small pot. I seem to remember planting those varieties two years ago on the deck. I guess I’ll know soon enough! I’ll post an update once fruits are growing.

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I was a bit mesmerized bee watching with my morning coffee. I could have watched them for hours. I spotted three different varieties busy pollinating among the flowers: large plump Bumble Bees, small fuzzy Mason Bees and these beautiful cool Metallic Green Bees. The Metallic Green Bee (Genus Agapostemon, also know as Sweat Bees) is a native bee found in North and South America. With a stunning green (or blue) metallic appearance, most males have the metallic green marking on the head and thorax with a yellow and black banded abdomen (as see in the photos) the females often have metallic green on their entire body. Today is the first time I spotted this beautiful creature in my garden. I hope they continue to come and visit!

This year’s basil has been outstanding! 🌱🌱🌱 My harvest has been tasty and plentiful. I’ve cut back all my plants multiple times and they are still going strong. I have been putting basil in everything to try to use it up before we have a cold snap. It’s definitely time to make some pesto. I have never dried basil… I might try it since I have quite a lot.

Two days ago I was finally able to pick two peaches the squirrel did NOT eat. Early in the season he came to the garden and started biting into all the peaches before they were ripe…. letting the uneaten half fall to the ground to rot. I am not happy with that squirrel!

These two were low hanging and had a chance to grow to baseball size. After posting the image on social media a friend commented that she puts out peanuts to keep the squirrels from eating her bounty. I thought that was a good/easy piece of advise. Next year I might try netting the tree. I read that can help. If anyone out there has other advise or has had success in this area let me know.

Two years ago I created this blog with two posts. My gardening continued even though the blog posts did not. This July I started posting more photos and information about the garden via my instagram account using the hashtag #urbangardener. Since then I have been connecting with a lot of gardeners, farmers, cooks and other creatives both locally and from around the world. It’s been fun and I started thinking this is what I should be doing with that blog I created.